A&A 654, A23 (2021)

https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202141067 Astronomy
c ESO 2021
&
Astrophysics

Physical characterization of recently discovered globular clusters

in the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy
I. Metallicities, ages, and luminosities
E. R. Garro1 , D. Minniti1,2 , M. Gómez1 , and J. Alonso-García3,4

1
Departamento de Ciencias Físicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Andres Bello, Fernández Concha 700, Las Condes,
Santiago, Chile
e-mail: elisaritagarro1@gmail.com
2
Vatican Observatory, Vatican City State 00120, Italy
3
Centro de Astronomía (CITEVA), Universidad de Antofagasta, Av. Angamos 601, Antofagasta, Chile
4
Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Nuncio Monseñor Sotero Sanz 100, Of. 104, Providencia, Santiago, Chile

Received 13 April 2021 / Accepted 20 July 2021

ABSTRACT

Context. Globular clusters (GCs) are important tools for rebuilding the accretion history of a galaxy. In particular, newly discovered
GCs in the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy can be used as probes of the accretion event onto the Milky Way (MW).
Aims. Our main aim is to characterize the GC system of the Sgr dwarf galaxy by measuring its main physical parameters.
Methods. We built the optical and near-infrared color-magnitude diagrams for 21 new Sgr GCs using the VISTA Variables in the
Via Lactea Extended Survey near-infrared database combined with the Gaia Early Data Release 3 optical database. We derived
metallicities and ages for all targets using the isochrone-fitting method with PARSEC isochrones. We also used the relation between
red giant branch slope and metallicity as an independent method to confirm our metallicity estimates. In addition, the total luminosities
were calculated in the near-infrared and in the optical. We then constructed the metallicity distribution (MD), the globular cluster
luminosity function (GCLF), and the age-metallicity relation for the Sgr GC system.
Results. We find that there are 17 metal-rich GCs with −0.9 < [Fe/H] < −0.3, plus 4 metal-poor GCs with −2.0 < [Fe/H] < −1.1
in the new Sgr GC sample. The metallicity estimates using isochrones and red giant branch slopes agree well. Even though our age
estimates are rough, we find that the metal-poor GCs are consistent with an old population with an average age of ∼13 Gyr, while the
metal-rich GCs show a wider age range, between 6−8 Gyr and 10−13 Gyr. Additionally, we compare the MD and the GCLF for the
Sgr GC system with those of the MW, M31, and Large Magellanic Cloud galaxies.
Conclusions. We conclude that the majority of the metal-rich GCs are located within the main body of the Sgr galaxy. We confirm
that the GCLF is not a universal distribution because the Sgr GCLF peaks at fainter luminosities (MV ≈ −5.5 mag) than the GCLFs of
the MW, M31, and Large Magellanic Cloud. Moreover, the MD shows a double-peaked distribution, and we note that the metal-rich
population looks like the MW bulge GCs. We compared our results with the literature and conclude that the Sgr progenitor could have
been a reasonably large galaxy able to retain the supernovae ejecta, thus enriching its interstellar medium.
Key words. galaxies: dwarf – Galaxy: halo – galaxies: luminosity function, mass function – Galaxy: stellar content – infrared: stars –
globular clusters: general

1. Introduction
The main accepted galaxy formation paradigm predicts that
galaxies grow hierarchically through mergers with other galax-
ies (e.g., Searle & Zinn 1978; White & Rees 1978), and thus
the accretion of diffuse gas and dark matter occur especially
into the halo. There are different types of mergers, but we can
broadly distinguish major mergers from minor mergers, depend-
ing on the mass ratio of the two objects. In the first case, the
masses of the two colliding galaxies are similar, while in the
second case, a galaxy of lower mass is accreted onto a more
massive galaxy. When a galaxy is observed, evidence of sub-
structures and deviations from symmetry are clearly indicative
of past or/and ongoing mergers. Clues can be detected within the
galaxies themselves in different forms, such as streams, bridges,
density waves, overdensities of stars, substructure in the galaxy
gas, different globular cluster populations, and changes in kine-
matics. Proofs of merging events are found both in the Galaxy
(Newberg et al. 2002; Belokurov et al. 2006; Martin et al. 2014)
and in external galaxies (i.e., Einasto et al. 2012; Cohen et al.
2014; Abraham et al. 2018) such as the Andromeda galaxy
(M31, Ibata et al. 2001). Therefore the history of our Milky Way
(MW) is a history of accretion. At least seven past accretion
events can be singled out: Kraken (Kruijssen et al. 2019, 2020),
Sequoia, (Myeong et al. 2019), Sagittarius (Ibata et al. 1994),
the Helmi stream (Helmi et al. 1999), and Gaia-Enceladus
(Helmi et al. 2018), and both the Large and Small Magellanic
Clouds (LMC and SMC) will infall toward the MW. We know
that the Magellanic system is likely on its first passage around
the MW (Kallivayalil et al. 2006, 2013; Besla et al. 2010).
The most representative example of a satellite galaxy that
is accreted by our MW is the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal
galaxy (Sgr dSph). Discovered by Ibata et al. (1994), it is
located behind the Galactic bulge at the heliocentric distance
D ≈ 26.5 kpc (Monaco et al. 2004; Hamanowicz et al. 2016;
Vasiliev & Belokurov 2020) and at about 6.5 kpc below the

Article published by EDP Sciences A23, page 1 of 17

 A&A 654, A23 (2021)
Galactic plane. The Sgr dSph represents an excellent labo-
ratory because the tidal destruction process is still ongoing
(Majewski et al. 2003; Law & Majewski 2010; Belokurov et al.
2014). The infall into the MW has been estimated to occur
8 ± 1.5 Gyr ago by Dierickx & Loeb (2017) and 9.3 ± 1.8 Gyr
ago by Hughes et al. (2019). However, many questions about its
formation and evolution before and after its accretion inside the
Galactic halo still remain unanswered.
The mass of the Sgr progenitor and the present-day mass of
the remnant are still topics of active discussion. The stellar mass
at the first peri-Galactic passage of the dwarf after its infall into
the MW.
In all cases, it is crucial to complete the census of the
GC systems in the Sgr dSph in order to set formation and
evolution constrains. The first step was made by Minniti et al.
(2021b), who identified 23 GC candidates that may belong to
the Sgr dSph. They used the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea
Extended (VVVX) survey, and confirmed based on their further
analysis that 12 of them are bona fide members. Additionally,
Minniti et al. (2021a) later discovered 18 more GCs that might
of the main body is M∗ ∼ 2 × 107 M (Ibata et al. 2004) and belong to the Sgr galaxy; 8 of them were confirmed as bona fide
members. In both papers (hereafter M21, for simplicity), phys-
the dynamical mass is Mdyn ∼ 2 × 108 M (Grcevich & Putman ical parameters such as reddening, extinction, and distance for
2009). However, the subsequent census of its stellar content each cluster were estimated. In this follow-up paper, we calcu-
revealed that its total mass could be as high as 1011 M including
its dark matter halo (Niederste-Ostholt et al. 2012; Laporte et al.
2018; Vasiliev & Belokurov 2020), indicating that this was a
major merging process between our Galaxy and the Sgr dSph.
Nevertheless, the accretion event of the progenitor of the Sgr
dwarf was a minor merger with a mass ratio of 1 : 104+70 −43 . The
accretion has occurred at z < 1, when the MW was already
late other important parameters: metallicities and luminosities,
and where possible, we give a rough estimate of the ages so that
the AMR can be explored.
In Sect. 2 we briefly describe the observational data. In
Sect. 3 we explain the methods we used to estimate the physical
parameters and the resulting values for each Sgr GC. In Sect. 4
we focus on the RR Lyrae stars in the Sgr GC system. In Sect. 5
completely formed and its stellar mass was M > 1010 M we show the metallicity distribution (MD) and luminosity func-
(Kruijssen et al. 2020; see their Fig. 9).
Although this satellite appears to be quite elongated out
to ∼100 kpc (Majewski et al. 2003; Law & Majewski 2010), its
main body contains an overdensity of stars that is concen-
trated in its center, where the massive and metal-poor globular
cluster NGC 6715 (M 54) is located. It is also coinci-
dent in position with the nucleus of the dwarf galaxy (e.g.,
Bassino & Muzzio 1995; Layden & Sarajedini 2000), although
Bellazzini et al. (2008) have argued based on measurements of
velocity dispersion profiles that M 54 is not the core of Sgr, but
instead it may have formed independently and plunged to the
core of Sagittarius as a result of dynamical friction. Although
a large number of star clusters would be expected in these
regions, only nine known and well-characterized GCs are asso-
ciated with Sgr. In addition to NGC 6715, Arp 2, Terzan 7,
and Terzan 8 are located in the main body, and Palomar 12,
Whiting 1, NGC 2419, NGC 4147, and NGC 5634 are situ-
ated in the extended tidal streams (Bellazzini et al. 2020). We
may expect that stars and globular clusters in the stream exhibit
a different age-metallicity relation (AMR) to those formed in
the central galaxy (Forbes & Bridges 2010; Leaman et al. 2013;
Kruijssen et al. 2019). The stellar population appears to be
divided into three groups. It is dominated by a metal-rich and
intermediate-age ([Fe/H] = −0.4 to −0.7 dex, t = 5 to 8 Gyr;
e.g., Layden & Sarajedini 2000; Bellazzini et al. 2006) popula-
tion in the central part of the galaxy. Additionally, indications of
a young metal-rich population ([Fe/H] = −0.4 and t = 2.5 Gyr)
have been found that also includes stars of solar abundance (e.g.,
Monaco et al. 2005; Chou et al. 2007). On the other hand, an old
and metal-poor (t = 10–13 Gyr, [Fe/H] ∼ −2.2; Momany et al.
2005) counterpart also exists.
In addition, Mucciarelli et al. (2017) analyzed 235 giant stars
and detected a metallicity gradient within the Sgr nucleus. They
found two peaks of the metal-rich population, indicating that the
stars in the metal-rich component formed outside in more than
a few billion years with [Fe/H] = −0.58 (38 ≤ R ≤ 70 kpc).
Each subsequent generation of stars was more centrally con-
centrated, with [Fe/H] = −0.38 (R ≤ 19 kpc). The authors
also reported that some memory of its formation may still be
detectable because the stellar population is not dynamically
mixed. They also suggested that Sgr was affected by a strong gas
loss that occurred 7.5 Gyr to 2.5 Gyr ago, presumably starting
A23, page 2 of 17
tion (LF) for all the GCs in the Sgr dSph, including the two new
detections from M21 and previously known GCs, and we com-
pare these distributions with the MD and LF of the MW, M31,
and LMC. In Sect. 6 we provide a summary and conclusions.
2. Observational datasets: VVVX, 2MASS, and Gaia
EDR3
We used the deep near-infrared (NIR) data from the VVV
(Minniti et al. 2010; Saito et al. 2012) and VVVX (Minniti
2018) surveys, acquired with the VISTA InfraRed CAMera
(VIRCAM) at the 4.1m wide-field Visible and Infrared Survey
Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA; Emerson & Sutherland 2010)
at the ESO Paranal Observatory. The VVV and VVVX data are
reduced at the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU;
Irwin et al. 2004), and further processing and archiving is per-
formed with the VISTA Data Flow System (VDFS; Cross et al.
2012) by the Wide-Field Astronomy Unit and is made avail-
able at the VISTA Science Archive and ESO Archive. In our
analysis, we used a preliminar version of the VVVX photo-
metric catalog (Alonso-García et al., in prep.), which extracts
the point-spread function (PSF) photometry from the VDFS-
reduced images. To build this photometric catalog, an analy-
sis similar to that described in Alonso-García et al. (2018) for
the VVV original footprint was followed. In order to increase
the dynamic range of our NIR photometry, we merged1 our
deep VVVX photometry with the fainter catalogs from the Two
Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; Skrutskie et al. 2006). In this
way, we are able to also provide accurate photometry for bright
stars (K s < 11 mag) that are saturated in the VVVX images.
We also used the K s -band photometry from McDonald et al.
(2013) and McDonald et al. (2014) for Minni327 alone, which
is located outside the VVVX area. On the other hand, we used
the recent optical photometry from the Gaia Early Data Release
3 (EDR3; Gaia Collaboration 2021) in order to take advantage
of the more precise astrometry and proper motions (PM), which
were employed especially in the first part of the work (M21) to
1
To merge the catalogs, we first transformed the VVVX
catalogs, which are in the VISTA magnitude system, into
the 2MASS magnitude scale by applying the recipe from
http://casu.ast.cam.ac.uk/surveys-projects/vista/
technical/photometric-properties
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
distinguish the nature of the candidates and the inclusion into the
Sgr galaxy. By matching the Gaia EDR3 and VVVX datasets,
we here construct optical and NIR color-magnitude diagrams
(CMDs) in order to obtain the metallicity, age, and luminosity
for each target.
3. Estimation of parameters for the new Sgr GCs
We focus on the 21 GCs that are recognized as confirmed Sgr
members in M21. We list them and summarize their main phys-
ical properties in Table 1.
Along the line of sight to the Sgr dwarf galaxy, high contami-
nation from the nearby MW disk and from the more distant bulge
field stars may represent an obstacle, but M21 applied a PM
decontamination procedure that allows us to work on clean cat-
alogs. To summarize, M21 performed two tests in order to esti-
mate the statistical significance of the stellar overdensities in the
Sgr main body. First, following the procedure of Koposov et al.
(2007), they calculated the number of stars in excess with
respect to the background field, whose random fluctuations were
assumed to be Poissonian. After this, they compared that excess
with the statistical error on the background number counts, and
finally, they revealed the cluster detection when the significance
exceeded 3σ. The second method concerns the variation of the
background. In this case, M21 computed the number counts of
sources included within several adjacent circles (r < 30 ) around
a wider area from each cluster center coordinate. Subsequently,
they calculated the standard deviation of the distribution of these
number counts to derive the signal-to-noise ratio and consid-
ered as significant all candidate GCs with detections higher
than 3σ.
Our main goals are to derive reliable values of metallicity,
age, and luminosity for an updated LF and a MD for this satel-
lite galaxy. First, we built the optical and NIR CMDs for all the
GCs in our sample (Fig. A.1), confirming that our targets are
not bulge GCs, which should be ∼2.5 magnitudes brighter in the
mean, as demonstrated by previous works (Minniti et al. 2010,
2017a,b, 2018; Palma et al. 2019; Garro et al. 2021). Addition-
ally, we compared the Sgr GCs and bulge fields CMDs. To sum-
marize, we first selected five bulge fields at the same latitude but
∼7◦ away from the Sgr main body. As done for our objects, we
constructed the Gaia-VVVX catalogs, properly decontaminated
by applying parallax and PM cuts. Figure 1 shows the compari-
son between these five bulge fields and Minni332 (taken as rep-
resentative of the Sgr GCs) CMDs. This proves that the Sgr GCs
shown in Fig. A.1 are not affected by the bulge population, and
it clearly demonstrates that the Sgr GCs we investigated are not
bulge GCs.
Following the same strategy as Garro et al. (2020, 2021), we
preferred the isochrone-fitting method in order to obtain robust
results. We favored the PARSEC alpha-enriched isochrones
(Bressan et al. 2012; Marigo et al. 2017), and adopted the red-
dening, extinction, and distance modulus values that were pre-
viously calculated by M21. Briefly, M21 derived appropriate
reddening corrections using the maps of Schlafly & Finkbeiner
(2011) and adopting the following relations for the extinctions
and reddenings: AK s = 0.11 × AV , AK s = 0.72 × E(J − K s ),
AG = 0.79×AV and AG = 2.0×E(BP−RP). M21 obtained a fairly
uniform reddening. Additionally, M21 employed the RC abso-
lute magnitudes and intrinsic color by Ruiz-Dern et al. (2018)
in order to compute distances for each individual cluster. There-
after, we fit in particular the position of RC, BHB, and brighter
stars. The best-fitting age and metallicity were obtained by com-
paring our data with isochrones generated with different ages
and metallicities and by selecting the best fit by eye. We first
fixed the age and varied the metallicity. Then we fixed the metal-
licity and searched for the best-fitting age. The variations in age
and metallicity have different effects in the evolutionary stages.
Changing the metallicity affects the RGB and the RC particu-
larly strongly, and conversely, changes in ages modify the posi-
tion of the MS-TO regions. In this way, we assigned an error to
age and metallicity by simultaneously changing the metallicity
and age values until the fitting isochrones did not reproduce all
evolutionary sequences in the optical and NIR CMDs.
We find 17 metal-rich GCs, specifically, 10 with [Fe/H] =
−0.3 to −0.5 dex and 7 with [Fe/H] between −0.6 and −0.9 dex.
Another 4 GCs are metal poor with [Fe/H] = −1.1 to −2.0 dex.
Inspecting the luminosity function for each GC (Fig. A.2), we
singled out the RC as a peak in the histogram. This confirms that
the stellar population is metal rich. To provide some examples,
we appreciate a clear excess in the histograms of Minni324, 330,
340, 342, and 344. Moreover, metal-poor clusters show blue hor-
izontal branch stars (BHBs) as well as RR Lyrae variable stars
(Sect. 4), for instance, Minni01, 147, and 335.
Using the same method, we tried to derive the age, but the
absolute estimate of this parameter is a challenge when the mag-
nitude of the main sequence turn-off (MSTO) is below the detec-
tion limit. However, a variety of works (e.g., Rosenberg et al.
1999; Gratton et al. 2003) have adopted a relative age determi-
nation (instead of absolute ages) from the observable CMDs,
although this is less accurate. We can therefore obtain a solid
lower limit for the age because the differences are ∆K s (HB-
MSTO) >1.80 mag and ∆G(HB-MSTO) >3 mag, meaning that
the clusters are not young, with an age & 7 Gyr. This could be
improved upon by measuring the extension of the giant branch
because bright and red stars in an extended AGB are indicative
of an intermediate-age system (e.g., Freedman et al. 2020, and
references therein). Even so, it is hard to distinguish AGB stars
from RGB stars in sparse CMDs like this. In addition, for the
clusters containing RR Lyrae, a more stringent age limit can be
derived from the typical ages of these variable stars, which are
older than about 10 Gyr (see Sect 4).
Taking the lower limit found for the age and the RR Lyrae
cluster membership into account, but also comparing our clus-
ters with known Sgr GCs and their observable CMDs, we obtain
more constrained ages for Minni 01, 146, 148, 147, 148, 311,
326, 330, 335, 338, and 343, and we find that all of them are
old GCs. Additionally, we note that Minni 144, 145, 324, 325,
328, 329, 332, 340, 341, 342, and 344 are intermediate or old
globular clusters with an age t > 8 Gyr. This shows that deeper
observations are necessary to better constrain the ages of these
GCs.
It is well known that the position and the morphology of the
RGB in the CMD strongly depend on the metal content of the
stellar population: the higher the metal content, the cooler the
effective temperature T eff and the redder the RGB stars (e.g.,
Ferraro et al. 2000; Valenti et al. 2005). Therefore a series of
empirical parameters (i.e., RGB colors at a fixed level of magni-
tude, RGB magnitude at a fixed color, and the RGB slope) can
be used to derive a photometric estimate of the global metallic-
ity of the considered stellar population. We preferred using the
slopeRGB as another independent method to constrain our metal-
licity estimates. Specifically, we adopted the slopeRGB − [Fe/H]
linear relation by Cohen et al. (2015) in the NIR passband. We
derived the RGB slope as the line connecting two points along
the RGB at the HB level and ∼2.5 mag brighter. The resulting
values are listed in Table 1 (Cols. 9 and 10) and agree very well
with those derived through isochrone-fitting.
A23, page 3 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)

Table 1. Position, metallicity, age, luminosity, mass-to-light ratio, mass, and specific frequency of RR Lyrae stars for all new Sgr GCs we analyzed.

Cluster ID L B [Fe/H]iso MK s MVtot Age (a) slopeRGB [Fe/H]slope (b) M/LK (c) M (c) S RR
[deg] [deg] [dex] [mag] [mag] [Gyr] [dex] [M ]
Minni01 (∗) 5.3706 −9.3482 −1.2 ± 0.2 −5.8 ± 0.8 −3.4 [12]10−13 −0.08 −1.22 0.9 3.8 × 103 43.65
Minni144 4.1693 −11.1990 −0.9 ± 0.2 −7.0 ± 0.7 −5.1 [11]10−13 −0.09 −0.90 0.8 1.0 × 104 9.12
Minni145 7.2695 −12.9988 −0.8 ± 0.3 −6.8 ± 1.1 −4.4 [10]10−13 −0.092 −0.85 0.8 8.5 × 103 86.89
Minni146 (∗) 3.9698 −14.1097 −1.1 ± 0.2 −6.9 ± 1.1 −4.5 [12]7−13 −0.084 −1.09 0.9 1.1 × 104 0
Minni147 3.9993 −11.6982 −2.0 ± 0.2 −6.7 ± 1.0 −4.4 [13]10−13 −0.07 −1.53 1.1 1.1 × 104 17.38
Minni148 5.3598 −13.3792 −0.3 ± 0.2 −7.2 ± 1.1 −5.4 [10]10−13 −0.11 −0.30 0.4 6.2 × 103 20.75
Minni311 (∗) 5.2749 −9.32097 −0.6 ± 0.3 −8.0 ± 1.1 −5.7 [10]7−13 −0.09 −0.90 0.7 2.3 × 104 0
Minni324 5.7821 −11.9392 −0.5 ± 0.2 −6.9 ± 1.1 −5.0 [13]10−13 −0.10 −0.60 0.5 5.8 × 103 20.0
Minni325 (∗) 4.1172 −14.5024 −0.4 ± 0.2 −6.9 ± 1.3 −5.1 [10]7−13 −0.108 −0.36 0.4 4.7 × 103 0
Minni326 5.7635 −13.0909 −0.3 ± 0.2 −7.3 ± 1.2 −5.1 [10]10−13 −0.11 −0.30 0.4 6.8 × 103 18.93
Minni328 5.2657 −12.3993 −0.5 ± 0.1 −6.9 ± 0.9 −5.1 [10]10−13 −0.10 −0.60 0.5 5.8 × 103 9.12
Minni329 5.0863 −11.8213 −0.7 ± 0.2 −7.4 ± 1.3 −5.3 [13]7−13 −0.096 −0.73 0.8 1.5 × 104 0
Minni330 6.1214 −14.0065 −0.6 ± 0.2 −7.2 ± 1.1 −4.9 [10]10−13 −0.096 −0.73 0.7 1.1 × 104 10.96
Minni332 5.9722 −12.1903 −0.5 ± 0.2 −7.0 ± 1.1 −5.1 [11]10−13 −0.101 −0.58 0.5 6.4 × 103 9.12
Minni335 5.1161 −12.4645 −1.3 ± 0.3 −7.7 ± 1.0 −5.5 [14]10−14 −0.076 −1.33 1.0 2.4 × 104 25.24
Minni338 4.4542 −14.5275 −0.6 ± 0.1 −7.6 ± 1.1 −5.3 [10]7−13 −0.096 −0.73 0.7 1.6 × 104 0
Minni340 5.2576 −13.2629 −0.5 ± 0.2 −8.0 ± 1.1 −6.1 [10]10−13 −0.104 −0.48 0.5 1.6 × 104 7.26
Minni341 5.4627 −13.8907 −0.5 ± 0.2 −8.0 ± 1.2 −6.1 [10]10−13 −0.104 −0.48 0.5 1.6 × 104 7.26
Minni342 4.9365 −14.1964 −0.5 ± 0.2 −7.4 ± 1.1 −5.5 [10]10−13 −0.099 −0.64 0.5 9.3 × 103 6.31
Minni343 5.0578 −14.4441 −0.8 ± 0.2 −7.8 ± 1.1 −5.4 [13]10−13 −0.092 −0.85 0.8 2.2 × 104 20.75
Minni344 5.1483 −14.6487 −0.4 ± 0.2 −8.3 ± 1.3 −6.0 [10]10−13 −0.104 −0.48 0.4 1.7 × 104 3.98

Notes. We mark with an asterisk all GCs that do not show well-populated CMDs, as they could have less accurate parameters. (a) We highlight the
age we used in the fit of the isochrones (Fig. A.1) in square brackets. (b) Calculated using the slopeRGB − [Fe/H] relation by Cohen et al. (2015).
(c)
Mass estimated by us, adopting different values of M/LK from Haghi et al. (2017), depending on our metallicity values.

Fig. 1. Comparison between the Gaia EDR3 optical CMDs of Minni332, taken as representative of the Sgr GCs (Minniti et al. 2021a), and five
bulge fields located at similar latitudes, but away from the Sgr main body.

Finally, we estimated the total luminosity MKs of all the GCs
in our sample. Certainly, the total luminosity varies from GC to
GC because it depends on several factors, such as the luminos-
ity of the brightest stars, the distribution of members along the
isochrones, and the presence or absence of red giants. We first
measured the flux for each star and consequently the total flux
for the target, and derived the absolute magnitude by converting
the total flux. All resulting MK s are listed in Table 1. We also
derived the equivalent absolute magnitude in V band, assuming
that the mean (V − K s ) = 2.5 ± 0.5 mag for observed GCs in
systems such as the MW and M31 (e.g., Barmby et al. 2000;
Cohen et al. 2007; Conroy & Gunn 2010). Although this could
be a rough approximation, studies (e.g., Pessev et al. 2008) have
demonstrated that the smallest spread in intrinsic colors is found
for clusters with ages &10 Gyr, whereas the larger spread in color
is found for clusters in the age range 2−4 Gyr. On the other
hand, comparing the intrinsic color with the M31 GC system,
Wang et al. (2014) found a good correlation between (V − K s )
and metallicity (with a mean value ∼2.5), even if the relation
shows a notable departure from linearity with a shallower slope

A23, page 4 of 17
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

Table 2. Position, metallicity, age, luminosity and mass for the previously known Sgr GCs, used for comparison.

Cluster ID L B [Fe/H] MK s MV Age M (a) M (b)

[deg] [deg] [dex] [mag] [mag] [Gyr] [M ]
NGC 6715 5.6070 −14.0871 −1.49 −12.51 −9.98 13.0 1.62 × 106 2.3 × 106
Terzan 8 5.7592 −24.5587 −2.16 −7.55 −5.07 13.0 5.8 × 104 2.6 × 104
Arp 2 8.5453 −20.7853 −1.75 −7.79 −5.29 11.3 3.8 × 104 3.2 × 104
Terzan 7 3.3868 −20.0665 −0.32 −7.55 −5.01 7.5 2.0 × 104 8.6 × 103
Palomar 12 30.5101 −47.6816 −0.85 −6.98 −4.48 9.0 6.4 × 103 1.0 × 104
Whiting 1 161.6160 −60.6363 −0.7 −4.96 −2.46 6.5 1.6 × 103 1.6 × 103
NGC 2419 180.3697 25.2417 −2.15 −11.92 −9.42 12.3 1.4 × 106 1.4 × 106
NGC 4147 252.8483 77.1887 −1.84 −8.67 −6.17 14.0 3.8 × 104 6.6 × 104
NGC 5634 342.2093 49.2604 −1.88 −10.19 −7.69 13.0 2.2 × 105 2.9 × 105
Notes. (a) Mass values by the Galactic Globular Cluster Database version 2 (Hilker et al. 2020) (b)
Mass estimated by the present work, adopting
different values of M/LK from Haghi et al. (2017), depending on our metallicity values.

toward the redder end ([Fe/H] & −0.1). Additionally, the V-band
total luminosities should be trusted only to 1−1.5 mag, which is
the scatter in this mean integrated color. A mean (V − K s ) = 2.5
therefore is an acceptable compromise for our targets.
These luminosities when calculated in this way are an under-
estimate of the total luminosity because the faintest stars are
missing. However, Kharchenko et al. (2016) analyzed MW star
clusters and noted that the cluster luminosity profiles show sim-
ilar features, such as a relatively fast rise in the luminosity at
small ∆K s 2 owing to the dominant contribution of a few bright
stars and a much slower increase when successively fainter stars
were included. As a rule, the first 10–12 brighter members accu-
mulate more than half of the integrated luminosity of a cluster;
this no longer changes at ∆K s > 10.
Consequently, we derived the total luminosity in V-band
(MVtot ) by comparing our GC luminosities with other known
GCs with similar metallicity in order to estimate the fraction of
the luminosity that comes from low-mass stars. We explain the
main steps we computed to estimate the total luminosity for each
Sgr GCs in Appendix A.
We find that all new Sgr GCs are low-luminosity objects,
at least ∼1.3 mag less luminous than the MW GC luminos-
ity function peak (MV = (−7.4 ± 0.2) mag from Harris 1991;
Ashman & Zepf 1998).
After we obtained the absolute magnitudes in K s - and V-
bands, we were able to estimate their masses. We first assumed
a typical GC mass-to-light ratio M/LK ≈ 1, equivalent to
M/LV ≈ 2 (Haghi et al. 2017; Baumgardt et al. 2020). Subse-
quently, because Haghi et al. (2017) reported the M/L−[Fe/H]
relations (see their Fig. 2), we derived the M/L values, depend-
ing on our metallicity estimates, in order to obtain more rig-
orous results. In both cases, we find low-mass GCs with the
All these parameters are summarized in Table 1. We also
mark with an asterisk all GCs that do not show well-populated
RGBs because they could have less accurate parameters. How-
ever, we include them in our analysis because they have no effect
on the final results.
4. RR Lyrae stars in the Sgr GC system
RR Lyrae stars are usually excellent tracers of metal-poor and
old populations in the MW. M21 searched for these stars within
30 and 100 from the cluster centers. As expected, they found an
excess of RR Lyrae in some metal-poor GCs, such as in Minni01
(N30 = 1; N100 = 3), Minni147 (N30 = 1; N100 = 6), and Minni335
(N30 = 4; N100 = 12). We assume that these variable stars are also
present in GCs with intermediate metallicity, such as Minni144
(N30 = 1; N100 = 7), Minni145 (N30 = 5; N100 = 14), and
Minni343 (N30 = 3; N100 = 13). Depending on the traditional
stellar evolutionary theory, however, we do not expect many RR
Lyrae stars in metal-rich GCs. However, a few metal-rich GCs
in the Sgr dwarf show more RR Lyrae within 100 from the clus-
ter center: Minni148 (N30 = 3; N100 = 20), Minni324 (N30 = 2;
N100 = 9), Minni326 (N30 = 3; N100 = 17), Minni328 (N30 = 1;
N100 = 9), Minni330 (N30 = 1; N100 = 11), Minni332 (N30 = 1;
N100 = 7), Minni340 (N30 = 2; N100 = 22), Minni341 (N30 = 2;
N100 = 11), Minni342 (N30 = 1; N100 = 5), Minni343 (N30 = 3;
N100 = 13), and Minni344 (N30 = 1; N100 = 15).
Even though this may appear to be an inconsistency, var-
ied observational evidence has shown RR Lyrae stars also
in some metal-rich GCs, such as NGC 6388 ([Fe/H] =
−0.44), NGC 6441 ([Fe/H] = −0.46 – Pritzl et al. 2002;
Clementini et al. 2005), NGC 6440 ([Fe/H] = −0.36), and
Patchick 99 ([Fe/H] = −0.20 – Garro et al. 2021).
same order of magnitude M ≈ 103 to 104 M (see Table 1).
Additionally, we calculated the mass for each known Sgr GC
listed in Table 2, finding a good agreement between our values
and those listed in the Galactic Globular Cluster Database ver-
sion 23 by Hilker et al. (2020). Clearly, the difference is due to
the large scatter in the Haghi relations (∆(M/LK ) ≈ ±0.5 and
∆(M/LV ) ≈ ±1.0).
2
Kharchenko et al. (2016) defined ∆K s as the magnitude difference
between a given cluster member and the brightest cluster member.
3
https://people.smp.uq.edu.au/HolgerBaumgardt/
globular/
We also computed the specific frequency of RR Lyrae stars in
the Sgr GCs. Suntzeff et al. (1991) defined the specific frequency
of RR Lyrae stars S RR as the number of RR Lyrae stars NRR per
unit luminosity, normalized to a typical Galactic globular cluster
luminosity of MVt = −7.5 mag,
S RR = NRR /10−0.4(MVt +7.5) (1)
(following the notation of Harris 1996). Using the V-band total
luminosities and considering the RR Lyrae stars within 3 arcmin,
we find 4 . S RR . 87 for the Sgr GCs. They are also faint GCs
and it is therefore expected that there are low number statistics.
We note that S RR are lower limits because we did not include
A23, page 5 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)
information about detection completeness or counted the can-
didate variable stars. On the other hand, in calculating S RR we
normalized the NRR values to full cluster luminosities. Account-
ing for this effect is not trivial because we do not know the spa-
tial distribution of RR Lyrae stars in any cluster, and because
we imaged the center of each cluster, we expect the NRR to
be 80–90% complete. This means that the S RR values may be
10–20% higher than quoted above. Therefore the determination
of these quite reliable S RR allows us to give a lower age limit of
age ∼ 10 Gyr for all clusters with S RR > 0. However, the absence
of RR Lyrae stars does not necessary imply young ages because
RR Lyrae are uncommon in metal-rich GCs, for example.
At this point, we compare the MW from the 2010 compila-
tion of the Harris (1996) catalog. This catalog contains only 4
of the ∼150 Galactic GCs as having S RR > 60, and only 2 of
these have S RR > 100. The highest value is reported for Palo-
mar 13, S RR = 127.5. According to this and given our sample
incompleteness, it is very likely that the Sgr dwarf galaxy has an
S RR greater than this. It is certainly intriguing that only a tiny
fraction of Galactic GCs have very high S RR as well as these Sgr
GCs because we find only one GC with S RR > 60 (Minni145),
and none with S RR > 100. This may suggest that Sgr GCs follow
a similar trend as MW GCs.
5. Discussion
In the next sections, we highlight the main differences between
the GCs within the Sgr dSph itself by comparing the resulting
values for the newly discovered GCs (Table 1) and the well-
known Sgr GCs (Table 2). However, we also wish to broaden
the discussion by making the first comparison between the Sgr
GC system and the GC system of neighboring galaxies: the MW,
M31, and LMC.
5.1. Sagittarius globular cluster system
According to Bellazzini et al. (2020), at least nine GCs are asso-
ciated with the Sgr stream: four clusters in the Sgr remnant,
NGC 6715, Terzan 7, Terzan 8, Arp 2; two clusters in the trail-
ing arm, Palomar 12 and Whiting 1; and three clusters that are
likely associated with an old arm, NGC 2419, NGC 1447, and
NGC 5634. Also Berkeley 29 an Saurer 1, two younger clus-
ters that originally were associated with the Sgr tidal extension,
have now been discarded using the improved Gaia EDR3 PMs
(Gaia Collaboration 2021). M21 increased the number of GCs in
the Sgr system. Hence, these discoveries pave the way to mul-
tiple studies on the understanding of Sgr dwarf itself, on the
chemistry and dynamics of these systems, especially when com-
pared with other GC systems, and they can also help to guide
theoretical studies and simulations (e.g., Vasiliev et al. 2021;
Vasiliev & Baumgardt 2021).
We find that the main body of the Sgr galaxy is mainly a
metal-rich component, as shown in Fig. 2. Figure 3 shows the
relation between the distance to the Sgr center and the metallic-
ity of its GCs, which ranges from NGC 6715 (which coincides
with the Sgr nucleus) to the most distant GC NGC 2419. We note
that except for NGC 6715, which is metal poor, the metallicity
is −0.3 > [Fe/H] > −0.9 in the innermost regions (R < 0.6 kpc),
whereas between R ≈ 0.6 kpc and 40 kpc, there are both metal-
rich (with the same metallicity range as the inner part) and metal-
poor GCs, with −1.1 > [Fe/H] > −2.3. The spread in the
MD of Sgr GCs appears to suggest that the Sgr dSph had an
extended star formation history and therefore now contains high-
metallicity clusters (Hughes et al. 2019). It appears that a metal-
A23, page 6 of 17
licity gradient might be indicated because we do not find metal-
poor GCs in the innermost regions, but we cannot conclude with
high certainty that this occurs in the main body of Sgr dSph. The
star cluster formation in the Sgr galaxy probably occurred in two
different episodes. The AMR diagram (Fig. 4) shows that metal-
poor GCs represent the old component with an average age
∼13 Gyr, while the metal-rich GCs span a wider range of ages
from younger with t ∼ 7−8 Gyr to older with t ∼ 10−14 Gyr.
This result also qualitatively agrees with the Sgr star formation
history by Hasselquist et al. (in prep.), as they demonstrated that
Sgr formed its metal-rich (−0.9 < [Fe/H] < −0.3) GCs some
6–8 Gyr ago. However, we can only speculate on the probable
formation of these clusters because the epoch of accretion of
the Sgr dwarf is largely uncertain and our GC ages are approx-
imate: the older objects could be formed in situ within the Sgr
progenitor and may consequently have been accreted onto the
MW, whereas the younger ones can be the result of the merg-
ing event with the MW. This could be distorted because when a
satellite galaxy infalls into the main galaxy halo, a subsequent
gas stripping leads to a truncation of the GC formation in the
smaller galaxy. However, there is evidence that some galaxies
(i.e., LMC and SMC) continue to form clusters after they have
entered the halo of the main galaxy. Additionally, Hughes et al.
(2019) used the E-MOSAIC simulation and reported that more
massive galaxies can continue to form GCs longer after entering
the halo of the main galaxy. Many of the satellite galaxies in this
population produce streams because the galaxies were accreted
later, and so the streams survive until the present day. More mas-
sive streams host younger and more metal-rich GCs.
Although our age estimates are rough and we need deeper
observations in order to reach the MSTO, Fig. 4 can help us to
broadly reconstruct the formation history of the Sgr galaxy. We
find similarities with the AMR shown in Massari et al. (2019)
and Forbes (2020). Both these works assumed a leaky-box age-
metallicity relation4 . We reproduce in Fig. 4 the best-fit halo
AMR found by Forbes (2020). We note that the Forbes fit follows
the red diamonds, which represent the known Sgr GCs, whereas
the newly discovered ones are located above that best fit. On the
other hand, we also compared the Sgr AMR with those of the
MW and LMC, as shown in Fig. 4. We appreciate that the Sgr
AMR looks more like the MW (Leaman et al. 2013; Horta et al.
2021), whereas the halo AMR by Forbes (2020) shows a similar
trend as the LMC AMR by Horta et al. (2021). It is important to
note that when Horta et al. (2021) compared the AMR of mas-
sive clusters for the LMC sample, they argued that the AMR
for the satellite galaxies is systematically higher than that for
the MW, as expected from mass assembly bias. Investigating the
origin of this bias, they found that the origin of the AMR trend
in the stellar populations is a function of the galaxy mass. This
means that higher-mass galaxies undergo more rapid enrich-
ments because they retain the supernovae ejecta, and this con-
sequently leads to a rapid enrichment of the interstellar medium
(ISM). Instead, lower-mass galaxies grow more slowly over time
because their potential wells are not deep enough and a large
fraction of the SNe ejecta and stellar mass are lost, leading to a
slower metal-enrichment process. Therefore this appears to indi-
cate that the Sgr progenitor was not a small galaxy, on the con-
trary, it was massive enough to retain the stellar mass loss to
quickly enrich its ISM.
4
The form of the age-metallicity relation used by Forbes (2020) is
[Fe/H] = −p ln(t/t f ), where p is the effective yield of the system, and
t f is the lookback time when the system first formed from unenriched
gas.
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
Fig. 2. Latitude vs. longitude map depicting the position of Sgr GCs
in the main body. The colored points highlight the cluster metallic-
ity. Red shows GCs with [Fe/H] > −0.5, orange shows GCs with
−1.0 6 [Fe/H] 6 −0.6, and blue shows GCs with [Fe/H] 6 −1.1 for
our convention. We included NGC 6715, Terzan 7, Terzan 8, and Arp 2
for comparison.
Fig. 3. Radial dependence of the metallicity for Sgr GCs. We consider
the projected distance from the center of Sgr, adopting D = 26.5 kpc
for this galaxy. The newly discovered Sgr GCs are marked with black
points, and the known Sgr GCs are represented as red diamonds.
5.2. Metallicity distribution
The MD can provide important clues to the process and condi-
tions relevant to galaxy formation. Therefore a comparison with
other systems can open a wider view.
For these purposes, we built the MD for the Sgr GC sys-
tem as shown in Fig. 5. We note two separate peaks, one metal-
Fig. 4. Age-metallicity relation for the Sgr GC system. The newly dis-
covered Sgr GCs are marked with black points, and the known Sgr
GCs are represented as red diamonds. In the top panel, the green line
reproduces the AMR for the MW halo GCs shown in Forbes (2020, see
their Fig. 3). In the bottom panel, the solid lines reproduce the median
star cluster AMR relation for the LMC (orange) and Milky Way-mass
(black) galaxies in the E-MOSAICS simulations by Horta et al. (2021,
see their Fig. 3).
Sgr
rich peak at [Fe/H]MR = −0.56 ± 0.18 dex, and a second
Sgr
metal-poor peak at [Fe/H]MP = −1.75 ± 0.35 dex. Addition-
ally, we constructed the MD for the MW GC system based
on the 2010 compilation of the McMaster Milky Way Globu-
lar Cluster catalog, Harris (1996), including 157 GCs. We also
included the M31 GC system, which contains 504 GCs, by
Fan et al. (2008). Finally, we also considered the LMC satel-
lite galaxy, but in this case, we did not find a complete cat-
alog, so we preferred to create it ourselves (by referring to
Mackey & Gilmore 2004; McLaughlin & van der Marel 2005;
Lyubenova et al. 2010; Colucci et al. 2011; Noël et al. 2013;
Jeon et al. 2014; Wagner-Kaiser et al. 2017; Piatti & Koch 2018;
Piatti et al. 2019; Horta et al. 2021). We selected 41 LMC GCs
that are listed in Table 3. The table summarizes the cluster
ID, observed V magnitude, reddening, metallicity, age, absolute
magnitude in V-band, and references. Although many additional
star clusters were cataloged by Palma et al. (2016), we did not
A23, page 7 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)
Fig. 5. Sagittarius metallicity distribution (top panel) and luminosity
function (bottom panel), including the new and known GCs.
consider them because most of these objects are very young and
have a mean metallicity value of ∼−0.3 dex. Moreover, they have
not been clearly categorized as open or globular clusters.
Figure 6 shows the MD for each sample, the Sgr, MW,
M31, and the LMC. We find that each MD shows a Gaussian-
like distribution. Especially a bimodal MD is shown for the
Andromeda and MW galaxies, with the metal-poor peaks at
MP = −1.71±0.46 dex and [Fe/H]MP = −1.55±0.35 dex
[Fe/H]M31 MW
and metal-rich peaks at [Fe/H]MR = −0.76 ± 0.39 dex and
M31
[Fe/H]MWMR = −0.54 ± 0.22 dex, respectively. In contrast, we find
a double-peaked distribution for the LMC with [Fe/H]LMC MP = because they require additional data for confirmation or rejec-
−1.66 ± 0.30 dex and [Fe/H]LMC MR = −0.47 ± 0.15 dex. We
expected a bimodal MD because this is a typical feature of all
GC systems (e.g., Ashman & Zepf 1992).
The comparisons between these galaxies show differences.
First, there are fewer metal-poor Sgr GCs than in the LMC,
while the number is similar when only metal-rich populations
are considered. On the other hand, the Sgr MD appears to follow
both the MW and M31 MDs. In particular, the Sgr metal-rich
GCs look more like the MW bulge GCs and also show a simi-
larly wide age range. In contrast to the LMC, all the metal-rich
GCs in the Sgr dwarf are therefore relatively old (age >6 Gyr).
This is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sgr GCs formed
after infalling into the MW halo, and thus the progenitor satel-
lite was gas rich, in accordance with what is shown in Fig. 4.
Kruijssen et al. (2011) found based on numerical simulations of
isolated and merging disk galaxies that the star clusters that sur-
A23, page 8 of 17
vive the merger and populate the merger remnants are typically
formed at the moments of the pericenter passage, namely slightly
before the starbursts that occur during a galaxy merger. These
clusters constitute a large fraction (30−60% per pericenter pas-
sage) of the survivors. They survived for two reasons: first, they
are formed before the peak of the starbust, and second, the clus-
ters that formed during the pericenter passage are ejected into
the stellar halo, where the disruption rate is low and the survival
chance is high. However, the clusters that are produced in the
central regions during the peak of the starburst are short-lived
and disrupt before they can migrate to the halo.
5.3. Luminosity function
The brightness distribution of the GCs, known as the globular
cluster luminosity function (GCLF), is an important tool that can
be used as a distance indicator as well as to constrain the theories
on the formation and evolution of GCs (e.g., De Grijs et al. 2005;
Nantais et al. 2006; Rejkuba 2012), and more precisely, to pre-
dict the dynamical processes that act in the destruction of GCs,
especially when merging events between galaxies are involved.
The main dynamical processes that can destroy GCs are (i) the
mass loss due to the stellar evolution (i.e., supernova explosions,
Lamers et al. 2010), (ii) dynamical friction (Alessandrini et al.
2014), (iii) tidal shock heating by passages through the bulge
or disk (Gnedin & Ostriker 1997; Piatti & Carballo-Bello 2020),
and (iv) evaporation due to two-body relaxation (Madrid et al.
2017). All of these processes, especially the last two, can change
the luminosity distribution.
Many works (Rejkuba 2012, and references therein) have
demonstrated that the GCLF is not a Gaussian distribution, nor
there is a universal distribution in most galaxies (Huxor et al.
2014). Although the Gaussian fit is a useful parameterization
(especially at the brighter end), its use has no physical moti-
vation. The shape of the GCLF deviates from the Gaussian
symmetric distribution for the MW as well as for the external
galaxies because it shows a longer tail toward the faint end. This
asymmetry is strongly related to the dynamical evolution of the
initial cluster luminosity function, which is well approximated
by power laws of the form dN(L)/dL ∝ Lα , with slopes in the
range −2.4 . α . −2.0, as found by Larsen (2002), for example.
Another reason that might explain why the GCLF deviates from
the symmetry might also be the mass function because mass
and luminosity are related parameters in GCs. It is therefore
expected that as dynamic evolution modifies the GCLF, it also
has an effect on the mass function (e.g., Fall & Zhang 2001). We
suggest that many inconclusive objects, defined as such by M21
tion (Minni02, 03, 04, 312, and 313, to name just a few), might
be widespread or dissolute GCs.
Following the same line as for the MD, we compare the Sgr
GCLF with the MW, M31, and LMC GCLFs.
We briefly describe the method we used to obtain reliable
absolute magnitudes for the GCs in each sample. We derived
the absolute magnitude in V-band for our Sgr GCs as explained
in Sect. 3 and shown in Table 1, and we used the luminosities
for the known Sgr GCs, shown in Table 2. Figure 5 depicts the
final Sgr GCLF. This is a unimodal distribution, which exhibits
Sgr
a prominent peak at MV = −5.46 ± 1.46 mag and shows a tail
toward the brighter end.
To build the MW GCLF, we adopted the MV values from
the 2010 compilation of the Harris (1996) catalog. For the LMC
GCLF, we again used our LMC catalog with 41 GCs (Table 3),
for which we also recovered the V magnitudes and color excess
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

Table 3. Properties of the LMC GCs used for comparison.

Cluster ID Vmag E(B − V) [Fe/H] Age MVtot References

[mag] [mag] [dex] [Gyr] [mag]
NGC 1466 11.59 0.09 −1.70 11.00 −7.25 Wagner-Kaiser et al. (2017), Jeon et al. (2014) (WK17, J14)
NGC 1711 10.11 0.09 −0.57 0.05 −8.73 Colucci et al. (2011) (C11)
NGC 1754 11.57 0.07 −1.50 12.96 −7.21 Piatti & Koch (2018), Piatti et al. (2019), Lyubenova et al. (2010) (P18, P19, L10)
NGC 1786 9.50 0.07 −1.75 12.30 −9.28 P18, P19
NGC 1718 12.25 0.10 −0.40 2.0 −6.62 Horta et al. (2021), Kerber et al. (2007) (H21,K07)
NGC 1835 10.60 0.14 −1.72 13.37 −8.40 P18, P19
NGC 1841 11.43 0.14 −2.02 12.57 −7.57 P18, P19, H21, Grcevich & Putman (2009) (G09)
NGC 1866 9.89 0.06 −0.51 0.13 −8.86 C11
NGC 1898 11.86 0.07 −1.32 13.50 −6.92 P18, P19
NGC 1916 10.38 0.13 −1.54 12.56 −8.58 P19, C11
NGC 1928 12.47 0.08 −1.30 13.50 −6.34 P19, Mackey & Gilmore (2004)
NGC 1939 11.83 0.16 −2.00 13.50 −7.23 P19, Mackey & Gilmore (2004)
NGC 1978 10.74 0.09 −0.38 1.9 −8.10 C11
NGC 2002 10.10 0.20 −2.20 0.18 −9.08 C11
NGC 2005 11.57 0.07 −1.74 13.77 −7.21 P18, P19, C11, L09
NGC 2019 10.95 0.07 −1.56 16.20 −7.83 P18, P19, C11
NGC 2100 9.60 0.26 −0.32 0.015 −9.77 C11
NGC 2210 10.94 0.10 −1.55 10.43 −7.93 P18, P19
NGC 2257 12.62 0.05 −1.77 11.54 −6.09 P18, P19, G06, WK17
ESO 121-SC3 14.04 0.04 −1.05 8.50 −4.64 P18, P19
Reticulum 14.25 0.03 −1.47 11.9 −4.40 G06, J14, WK17
Hodge11 11.93 0.08 −2.00 13.92 −6.88 G06,WK17, P18, P19
NGC1651 12.43 0.13 −0.70 2.0 −6.53 H21, K07, Noël et al. (2013) (N13)
NGC 1777 12.41 0.13 −0.60 1.1 −6.55 H21, K07, N13
NGC 1783 10.60 0.10 −0.35 1.7 −8.26 H21,Mucciarelli et al. (2008), N13
NGC 1806 11.12 0.08 −0.60 1.5 −7.69 H21, Mucciarelli et al. (2014), N13
NGC 1831 10.70 0.13 −0.10 0.7 −8.26 H21, K07, N13
NGC 1856 9.85 0.07 −0.40 0.3 −8.93 H21, K07, N13
NGC 1868 11.14 0.13 −0.70 1.1 −7.82 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2121 11.84 0.17 −0.40 2.9 −7.25 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2136 10.20 0.10 −0.40 0.09 −8.67 H21, N13 Mucciarelli et al. (2012)
NGC 2137 11.94 0.03 −0.40 0.09 −6.71 H21, Mucciarelli et al. (2012), McLaughlin & van der Marel (2005)
NGC 2155 12.27 0.14 −0.35 2.5 −6.73 H21, N13, Martocchia et al. (2019),
NGC 2162 12.22 0.13 −0.40 1.2 −6.74 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2173 11.92 0.13 −0.60 1.6 −7.04 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2209 12.76 0.13 −0.50 1.2 −6.20 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2213 12.08 0.13 −0.70 1.7 −6.88 H21, K07, N13
NGC 2249 11.84 0.13 −0.40 1.0 −7.12 H21, K07, N13
Hodge 6 – – −0.35 2.0 – H21, Hollyhead et al. (2019)
SL 506 – 0.08 −0.40 2.2 – H21, K07
SL 663 – 0.07 −0.70 3.1 – H21, K07

Fig. 6. Metallicity distribution for Sgr (black histogram), MW (blue histogram), M31 (green histogram), and the LMC (magenta histogram) GC
systems (in the left panel). We also show separately the Sgr and LMC metallicity distributions (in the right panel) as a zoomed plot of the left
panel, and the middle panel highlights the Sgr MD. The histograms are constructed adopting a bin size of 0.2 dex.

E(B − V) in addition to the metallicities. We adopted the LMC
distance modulus (m − M)0 = 18.56 mag from Di Benedetto
(2008). For the M31 GCLF, we preferred a more complete cat-
alog: the Revised Bologna Catalogue (RBC, V.5, August 2012
– Galleti et al. 2006, 2014) of M31 globular clusters and can-
didates. This catalog includes 2,060 objects, but we selected
the 625 confirmed GCs (flag = 1) with optical photometry.
For M31 we used a distance modulus (m − M)0 = 24.47 mag
(McConnachie et al. 2005). At this point, we are able to cal-
culate the absolute magnitude in V-band for the LMC and
M31 GC system by applying the same method as for Sgr GCs
(Sect. 3).
After we obtained the GC luminosities, we built the luminos-
ity function for each sample, thus comparing these galaxies.

A23, page 9 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)
Fig. 7. Luminosity function for Sgr (black histogram), MW (blue histogram), M31 (green histogram), and the LMC (magenta histogram) GC
systems (in the left panel). We also show separately the Sgr and LMC luminosity functions (in the right panel) as a zoomed plot of the left panel,
and we use the middle panel to highlight the Sgr LF. The histograms are constructed considering a bin size of 0.5 mag.
Figure 7 clearly shows a double-peaked M31 GCLF with the
fainter peak at MVM31 = −5.71 ± 0.71 mag and the brighter peak
at MVM31 = −7.95 ± 1.12 mag. A less pronounced double-peaked
is notable for the MW GCLF, which is shifted by ∼0.5 mag
toward fainter luminosities with respect to that of M31 because
the fainter peak is at MVMW = −4.01 ± 1.28 mag and the brighter
peak is at MVMW = −7.46 ± 1.04 mag. On the other hand, we
find that the LMC GCLF is a unimodal distribution peaked at
MVLMC = −7.43 ± 1.17 mag, based on a sample with 38 GCs for
which we recovered both V magnitudes and reddening values.
A plausible reason for the observed double-peaked GCLFs in
the MW and M31 might be that many GCs have been accreted by
the Andromeda halo as well as by the MW halo (Peacock et al.
2010; Huxor et al. 2014). This scenario is additionally support
when the Sgr GC system is included, for which the LF shows a
fainter peak. More generally, Mackey & Van Den Bergh (2005)
found a similar fainter peak in the GCLF of the young halo GCs
of the MW, which they argued are most likely accreted objects.
Therefore this appears to indicate that accreted Sgr GCs have
survived disruption processes deriving from the merging event,
and the GCs that we see today are the remnants of more massive
objects or the final products of the accretion. However, we note
that the faint Sgr clusters are relatively more numerous than their
MW counterparts. Therefore this can indicate dynamical evolu-
tion, such as more efficient destruction in the larger galaxies, or
incompleteness at the fainter peak, because we did not include
many of the low-luminosity Galactic GCs that were recently dis-
covered, nor did we consider that many more faint objects are
still to be found.
Finally, the actual LMC LF may be more complex than the
one we show in Fig. 7 because there is evidence for very com-
plex and still ongoing star formation activity (Bruzual & Charlot
2003). However, based on our data, the LMC MV GCLF peak is
brighter than the Sgr GCLF peak. This appears to suggest that
the LMC forms more massive clusters or that the dynamical pro-
cesses in the LMC are different than those undergone by the Sgr
dwarf galaxy. However, this might also be because our results
are incomplete, or because the LMC is generally younger than
the Sgr dSph.
6. Summary and conclusions
We analyzed the new 21 GCs that were recently discovered by
M21 in the main body of the Sgr dwarf galaxy. We built their
optical Gaia EDR3 and NIR VVVX CMDs and proceeded to
fit isochrone models in order to derive suitable values for their
A23, page 10 of 17
metallicities and ages. We confirmed our metallicity estimates
using an independent method (slopeRGB − [Fe/H] relation by
Cohen et al. 2015). Furthermore, we also calculated for each tar-
get the total luminosity in the K s and V bands, finding all of them
to be faint (MV > −6.2) clusters.
After the metallicities and luminosities were obtained, we
were able to build the MD and the LF for the Sgr GC sys-
tem (including the new GCs discovered by M21 and the pre-
viously known GCs associated with the Sgr dwarf) for the first
time. We find that the main body of Sgr prevalently contains
a metal-rich component. However, both metal-poor and metal-
rich GCs are found, with very different ages: metal-poor GCs are
old with t ∼ 13 Gyr, whereas metal-rich GCs show a wider age
range from 7−8 Gyr up to 10−13 Gyr. Our age estimates are not
very accurate because the MSTO for the GCs in our sample is
below our detection limit, but we derived minimum ages assign-
ing an age >10 Gyr for the GCs with S RR > 0, and also a lower
limit of ∼7 Gyr (derived from ∆K s (HB-MSTO) for all GCs with
S RR = 0. We did not detect a metallicity gradient, but we find
that the innermost regions (R < 0.6 kpc) show GCs with metal-
licities of ∼ − 0.5 dex, while between 0.6 and 40 kpc from the
Sgr nucleus, we can find both metal-rich and metal-poor pop-
ulations. We compared our results with the MD and GCLF of
other galaxies: the MW, the Andromeda galaxy and the LMC,
thus placing constraints on the formation and evolution of the
Sgr dwarf galaxy. Based on this comparison, we suggest that the
Sgr progenitor could have been a gas-rich galaxy, and that this
gas was retained and subsequently converted into GCs during the
infall into the MW halo. Many GCs survived the main dynamical
processes (i.e., tidal shocks and two-body relaxation process),
probably because they were formed before the main star forma-
tion burst and were pulled toward the halo, where these processes
are less efficient. If this mechanism occurred, some of the incon-
clusive objects detected in the main body of Sgr by M21 might
be dissolved GCs associated with the Sgr dwarf. Additionally,
when we compare the GCLFs, since the Sgr distribution peaks
at lower luminosities (MV ≈ −5.5 mag) than all other samples,
we can conclude that the dynamical processes that destroy GCs
are more efficient in larger galaxies than in smaller ones, or that
many faint GCs are missed in our compilations.
Acknowledgements. We gratefully acknowledge the use of data from the ESO
Public Survey program IDs 179.B-2002 and 198.B-2004 taken with the VISTA
telescope and data products from the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit.
E.R.G. acknowledges support from an UNAB PhD scholarship and ANID PhD
scholarship No. 21210330. D. M. acknowledges support by the BASAL Cen-
ter for Astrophysics and Associated Technologies (CATA) through grant AFB
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
170002. J. A.-G. acknowledges support from Fondecyt Regular 1201490 and
from ANID – Millennium Science Initiative Program – ICN12_009 awarded to
the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics MAS.
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 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

Appendix A: LFs and CMDs for the new Sgr GCs

Fig. A.1. NIR and optical CMDs for all the Sgr GC in our sample. The Hess diagrams represent the VVVX (on the left) and Gaia EDR3 (on
the right) datasets, the cyan points are the stars from the 2MASS catalog, and the dotted black lines are the PARSEC isochrones that best fit the
evolutionary sequences.

A23, page 13 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)

Fig. A.1. continued.

A23, page 14 of 17
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

Fig. A.2. Red and blue histograms depict the luminosity function for each Sgr GC in the NIR VVVX and in the optical Gaia EDR3 passbands,
respectively. The histograms are constructed adopting a bin size of 0.1 mag because we wish to show the RC position as a clear excess.

A23, page 15 of 17
 A&A 654, A23 (2021)

Fig. A.2. continued.

A23, page 16 of 17
 E. R. Garro et al.: Physical characterization for recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy

Appendix B: Estimation of the total luminosity
As explained in Section 3, the integrated luminosities of the Sgr
clusters, calculated in K s −band, do not include the contribution
from faint stars, undetected in our photometry, as we can appre-
ciate in Fig. A.1. In order to better estimate the total luminosities
of our clusters, we have therefore used the following approach.
The main goal of this approach is to quantify the fraction
of luminosity that comes from the faintest stars. To do this,
we compared the brightness of Sgr GCs with known and well-
characterized GCs. We recovered for the GCs the reddening and
distance modulus and list them in Table B.1. The main steps we
adopted to achieve our results are listed below.
1. We calculated the absolute magnitude MK s of known MW
GCs (Table B.1), using the VVV/VVVX datasets. In this
way, we were able to directly compare the luminosities found
for Sgr GCs and known GCs in the same magnitude range
(10.2 . K s . 17.2, only for Terzan 8 we used 2MASS pho-
tometry 12.0 . K s . 16.7).
2. The obtained MK s was converted into the absolute mag-
nitude in V−band (MV ), using the typical GC color (V −
K s ) = 2.5 mag (e.g., Barmby et al. 2000; Cohen et al. 2007;
Conroy & Gunn 2010).
3. We scaled the MV values to the absolute magnitude listed
in the 2010 version of the Harris (1996) catalog (MVHarris ).
Consequently, we estimated the fraction of luminosity that
comes from the faintest stars for each known GC, computing
∆(MV ) = MVHarris − MV .
4. We grouped these GCs according to their metallicities, then
we calculated the average of ∆(MV ) fractions for each group.
5. Finally, we added these averages to the Sgr luminosities. We
considered at least two known GCs with the same metallicity
range as the Sgr GCs (from −0.3 to −2.0).
We achieved an empirical correction to our cluster luminosities
in this way, assuming similarity with other GCs. The resulting
luminosities are listed in Table 1. We find that the missing lumi-
nosity was lower than 1.8 mag.

Table B.1. Known and well-characterized GCs we used to derive the total luminosity for each Sgr GC.

Cluster ID [Fe/H]a E(B − V) (m − M)0 References

[dex] [mag] [mag]
Liller 1 −0.33 3.09 14.48 Valenti et al. (2010) (V10)
NGC 6440 −0.36 1.15 14.58 Valenti et al. (2004) (V04)
NGC 6441 −0.46 0.52 15.65 V04
NGC 6624 −0.44 0.31 17.33 Siegel et al. (2011) (S11)
Terzan 6 −0.56 2.35 14.13 Valenti et al. (2007) (V07)
Terzan 12 −0.50 2.06 12.65 Ortolani et al. (1998)
NGC 6637 −0.64 0.22 17.35 S11
Terzan 2 −0.69 1.40 14.30 Christian & Friel (1992)
BH 261 −0.76 0.36 13.90 Ortolani et al. (2006)
NGC 6569 −0.76 0.49 15.40 V07
UKS 1 −0.98 2.2 16.01 Minniti et al. (2011)
NGC 6638 −0.95 0.43 15.07 V07
Terzan 9 −1.05 1.79 13.73 V10
NGC 6642 −1.26 0.42 14.30 Barbuy et al. (2006)
NGC 6626 −1.32 0.42 13.70 Kerber et al. (2018)
NGC 6540 −1.35 0.66 13.57 V10
NGC 6558 −1.32 0.50 14.59 Barbuy et al. (2018)
NGC 6453 −1.50 0.69 15.15 V10
NGC 6715 −1.49 0.14 17.27 S11
Terzan 8 −2.16 0.14 17.26 S11
Notes. a The [Fe/H] values are taken from the 2010 version of the Harris (1996) catalog.

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